Browsed byCategory: Gardening

I have been remiss in making blog posts as I try to finish Fall work and prepare for Winter. The Palouse region has four-season weather, but as anyone who has lived here knows, those season lengths are not consistent. Around a month after it really came into being Fall, the weather is wintery already. We’ve already had a morning snow storm, and a few days of snow sticking around. There was a period of consistently freezing nights, though we’ve in…

As I’ve said before, it has been quite the wait for finished compost, especially in the quantities I desire. My gardens have been compost deprived for some time. This has been especially difficult as I’ve needed organic matter for my hugelkultur beds before it could break down. But I am determined to finally solve this problem- with an even more enormous compost pile. Since I work as a gardener I collect a high volume of organic matter over the course of…

There was a hard frost overnight. It’s the second one, but it seems like a killer- though some of my sensitive plants weathered it surprisingly well. It’s always bittersweet, watching it go from summer to fall. It’s particularly difficult to know how to think about fall this year. It was a brutal, long, energy sucking winter last year. It was late to get anything in the ground. I don’t think anyone is ready for winter to come. And as I…

I got some good pictures of my lovely finished compost with the wife’s properly working camera. It was a long wait to have this finished compost, but I’m sure it will step up my whole gardening game. My main problem was that I kept needing the organic matter for mulch before it was completed! Few things have the lovely smell and feel of proper compost.

One downside of gardening in the Palouse Region is that there is not the longest gardening season, and the chill and snow of Fall can come on rapidly. This year, after a long, cool, wet Winter and Spring the summer weather arrived out of nowhere, bringing 90 degree temperatures when it had just been 60. This meant Spring planting was brutal, and I did not get any real germination from lettuce, spinach, or carrots. (Though my lettuce I bought as…

One struggle I have had gardening has been a consistent lack of finished compost. My parents get wood chips dumped on land near my house, which would make beautiful compost except it rarely gets turned because the skid steer battery doesn’t hold a charge and my truck isn’t big enough to jump it. My first or second year gardening here, I loaded up woody compost which I thought was close to finished, only to find there was a great quantity…

I’ve been growing skeptical of the Ruth Stout soil mulch method, which I used for two of the beds this season. I don’t know if it is targeted for this climate, but also think it may have been applied at the worst time for keeping seeds viable and giving them exposure when things are planted. Also, her claim that this doesn’t leave a towering mass of organic matter threatening your plants did not prove true. And it does seem to…

When we moved into our house over four winters ago the one fruit tree on the property was an old apple tree. It was massively overgrown and had barely produced anything in years. I wish I had pictures of the progression (it’s what I get for not trusting the cloud!).

The baby praying mantises are out in force! Its always exciting, because theyre one of my favorite insects, but makes mowing slower because I never want to hurt them. This yard was full up! I think a lot of people never notice them, but people dont look for insects! These are smaller than they appear,though one is the bigggest I saw, think the scale compared to a blade of grass. (I didnt think I could get this clear of a…